Page 46 of Little Witch

Relief hit me hard enough that my knees actually threatened to buckle under it. "I'm here, love. I've got you."

The light started to dim as she regained control, the magic settling around us instead of consuming everything in reach. She gasped, whole body trembling with exhaustion as the last surge of the spell finished tearing through the clearing, darkness dissolving into nothing, the shadow-things gone as completely as if they'd never existed at all.

Then, just as the final light faded, her legs gave out entirely.

"Amber!" I caught her before she hit the ground, heart hammering so hard it hurt. For one endless second my mind went completely blank, fear tearing through me as I checked for her pulse, for breath, anything.

She was still. Too still.

"No — no, no, Amber, please—" My voice cracked apart on her name, panic clawing up my throat faster than I could contain it.

Then her eyes fluttered open.

"Rowan?" Groggy. Soft. Alive.

I let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding the entire time, my whole body sagging with relief so complete it felt like it might knock me over on its own. "Amber."

She blinked a few more times, gaze still unfocused, then a weak, real smile broke through. "Did we... did we actually do it?"

A laugh tore out of me, unsteady, half sob, entirely full of everything I felt in that moment. "Yeah, love. We did it. You did it."

She groaned, shifting slightly in my arms. "That was intense. I don't think I like being a witch. It hurts."

I couldn't stop myself. I leaned down and kissed her, soft at first, then deeper, feeling the warmth of her mouth against mine, the strength of her heartbeat finally settling under my hands. She was okay. Alive. And we'd won, all of us, together.

When I finally pulled back, my voice came out rough with everything I still hadn't said. "You're the hero here, Amber. You fixed it. You saved every single one of us."

She smiled up at me, eyes still a little dazed but warm, and for one long moment the whole battlefield, the fear, the years of darkness — none of it mattered. We had each other. That was enough.

A cheer rang out behind us, and I turned to find Cian and Dad running toward us, faces lit with something I hadn't seen on either of them since we'd all found each other in that Sanctum. Dad pulled Amber into a fierce hug the second I let her go, voice thick. "You did it, sweetheart. You actually did it."

Cian clapped a hand on my shoulder, grinning wide despite the blood and exhaustion painted across all of us. "You've got yourself a good one there, brother. A really bloody good one."

I couldn't stop smiling either, even through everything the night had put us through. The air itself felt lighter, brighter, like the whole world had finally clicked back into the shape it was always supposed to hold. The Hollow was balanced. The darkness was gone. And for the first time since any of this had started, we were actually free.

Amber looked up at me, eyes still dazed but full of warmth. "Come on, love," I said, helping her back to her feet, keeping an arm braced around her in case her legs weren't quite ready to hold her weight yet. "Let's get you home."

She leaned into me, hand resting flat against my chest. "Home sounds perfect."

Somewhere off to the side, Orias was already limping toward us, blood soaked through his shirt but grinning despite it, and I felt the whole weight of the last few weeks finally start to lift off all of us at once as we turned back toward the treeline, toward the world we'd fought this hard to get back to, finally ready to go home.

Chapter Twenty Six

Home felt different that night. Not in a bad way more like it felt the same as a place that you’d spent weeks convinced you might never see it again — every ordinary thing suddenly precious, the creak of the stairs, the smell of the kitchen, the exact worn spot on the couch cushion that had molded itself to the shape of three people over years of Sunday mornings.

We'd all showered separately first, actual hot water from a real boiler instead of whatever the Sanctum had conjured for us, and it had felt so good I'd nearly cried standing under the spray, scrubbing at skin that still smelled faintly of smoke and shadow no matter how many times I rinsed. Then we'd eaten — proper takeaway, the greasy kind neither twin would normally touch, because none of us had the energy to actually cook and none of us cared. We sat cross-legged on the living room floor eating chips straight out of the paper, laughing at absolutely nothing, high on the sheer, stupid relief of being back somewhere real.

By the time we made it up to bed, all three of us piled into Orias's room like we'd never once considered sleeping anywhere else, I felt lighter than I had in longer than I could properly remember.

"I still can't believe Dad's actual first request, once we got back into signal range, was to order himself a phone so he could 'catch up on years of football,'" I said, flopping back against the pillows. "Not 'I missed my own bed.' Not 'I missed real food.' Football."

"Man's got priorities," Orias said, dropping onto the bed beside me, still faintly smelling of the mint shower gel he'd apparently used half a bottle of. "Respect it, honestly."

"He asked me what a smartphone was," Rowan added, settling on my other side, one arm sliding behind his head. "Then spent forty minutes trying to figure out how to turn the flashlight off."

"In fairness, that app placement is genuinely confusing." I laughed.

"Cian asked me if social media was 'still a thing people did,' like he'd been gone a century instead of—" I stopped myself before finishing the sentence, some old instinct catching the number before it left my mouth, and just laughed harder instead. "A while."